Tyranny of the Minority

Many Last Quarter folk either become preoccupied with the manner in which civilization is decaying or, perhaps, civilization does regularly go through cycles of decay. Sometimes, though, I feel that it is little else that a veiled sense that one's "game plan" or "dream" hasn't quite worked out.

M and I were driving about a few days ago looking for a snack at a local eatery. It had closed. I suspect both of us experienced disappointment and we talked a bit about all the places that had closed in the roughly 40 years we've lived in this township .... moving in when we still had two pre-teenage kids and an infant. We talked, need I add, of all the people who were no longer among us. All this while we had our snack.

Watching the House of Representatives attempt to bring the country to a partial standstill over its discomfort with Obama or his "Care" ... who can tell which these days? ... reminded me of all the ways I watch folk universalize their sense of disappointment in some result or life-reality into the uselessness or worthlessness of life, in general.

All the following are true to me ... that is are things that I believe:

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      I am not capable of many things that I was capable of just several years ago ....

          Half my cousins are dead

     Essentially all of the folk in my life in my parents generation are dead, too.

          The Cities of the World seem to be approaching a dangerous unlivable quality.

     These cities are unsafe for visitors and dwellers, alike.

          It's likely that within 60 years the great cities that were built to function as ports beyond their ability to contain huge numbers of people will be regularly under water.

      There are many things I am supposed to understand that I do not ... included in this rather lengthy list are most commercials on television, the way people drive and, maybe, politically the hardest ... some sexual behaviors. Oh, I can identify with Gay lifestyles, even though I am, as far as I know, a "straight old man" ... but hard as I can try (and I have), I haven't been able to identify with those who have chosen sexual surgeries to align with their internal senses of themselves. I feel as if I should've been able to make this transcendent leap ... but I haven't.

          I fret, just as my grandparents had before me, about the cost of goods. I paid $2050 for my first new car in 1965 and I cannot get used to the idea that some people are forced to pay that much for a prescription at their local pharmacy or that therapists are charging $250/hour and lawyers twice or three times that. I cannot get my arms around those things.

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"OK, OK," I say to myself. "So, you can't get your arms around those things, Western Civilization is in tough shape, and the Cities suck-big-time. So what."

The Stones said: you can't always get what you want.

I suppose what I'm saying is that people and groups and political parties can become kind of weird about not getting it all. They can dig their heels in and refuse life by taking to bed or to their homes as depressed shut-ins. They can bring the World to a relative standstill rather than accept that their country or public opinion has shifted in substantive ways.

The Small and Larger Worlds that we live in have their ways of getting on ... even if they seem to be getting awfully near to cliffs and their precipices.

I'll sit back, eat the popcorn and watch the show, even though, I -- like every other living thing -- don't really get to see the end of the movie.

Lost in the Details

Older folk seemed to be expected to have wise things to say about well-known topics. Unfortunately, they're asked to do this at a time when half their day may be spent in walking about in the Middlde Aged Fog of the Last Quarter. Any case, been left to speak, this weekend about

The Book of Genesis, a curious volume of fifty brief chapters. It opens

with a myth of creation and some brief detours into the dangers of

kindling divine wrath; The remainder of Genesis (XII-L) reads like an

annotated four generation genogram, an expository family-therapy

casebook. It tracks  the travels and family intaglios of a nomadic herdsman of the

Judaean Desert, the uncolorful life of his favorite son, the struggles between the two

sons of a third generation, and the chaotic entanglements
of the fourth generation children of the physically weaker of these two
sons. These thirty eight later chapters, collectively, present the
congeries of madnesses that, under the worst of imaginable conditions, may
attend family life, including: envy, gratuitous murder, infanticide, incest,
lying, paranoiac preoccupations, rivalry, and spite. Curiously, these
madnesses are presented by the author without significant recourse to
moralistic judgement or theological homiletics.

 

Genesis is different, in this respect, than other books of the Bible. The final four volumes of the Pentateuch, focusing as they do on the life of Moses the Liberator from Bondage and Moses the Lawgiver, outline a prescriptive and proscriptive life replete with prophetic curses and blessings for sinners and saints, coupled with not infrequent moralizing. These later volumes decry a reliance on graven images and, stylistically, move away from the pictorial presentations of family life across the generations that are essential ingredients of the earlier saga in Genesis. And Moses and God almost seem to form a pair … dance a pas de deux.

 

The Prophets that fill in much of the remainder of Torah continue in this manner: the People and their Kings sin, the prophets preach against their hedonism and prophesy doom, and the sinning nation is punished with societal havoc, cultural decay and foreign invasions. Some notable exceptions are available in the writings of the visceral and fleshy King David and his son, Solomon. These poems are, however, oddities and — even thus considered — they (Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs) fail to capture the richness of family life as presented in Genesis and focus, instead, on Man’s relation to the Deity or to his Heavenly and Earthly  Loves. The New Testament, on the other hand, in large a collection of teaching parables, does not highlight the foibles of family life. In removing their central character, Jesus of Nazareth, from the inherent strands of descent and begats, these writings move the reader to transcend interest in Earthly and, therefore, familial affiliations, and to substitute for them fealty to and interest in God or, somewhat later in Christendom, to the expanded Trinity. 

      

Curious, too, is the literary longevity of the stories of Genesis or the religious follower’s capacity to tolerate endless repetitions of these tales in their religious services! We may take as an extreme example, the story of Abraham’s attempt to offer-up his second son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to the God who appeared to him (Genesis: XXII). This story is read in Protestant churches on selected occasions (e.g., Good Friday and during the triennial cycle). It is, also, offered up in Catechism and Bible study classes as a fine example of obeisance to the Deity,  with the Church Fathers frequently referring to Isaac as the first lamb, the harbinger of the Nazarene. More surprising, though, is its ubiquity in the Jewish liturgy. It is read twice on the fourth Sabbath of each year’s Biblical reading cycle, twice on the second day of the Jewish New Year, and every other day of the year once in morning prayers.

 

And while Jewish tradition scorns concrete symbolic representations, such as statuary, these verbally represented pictures of family life, collectively constituting a psychic iconography of sorts, must remain, if only due to repetition, emblazoned in the mind of the believer no less so than concrete statuary might. Those who have had direct exposure to these themes and other who have been exposed to them through the character of their caretakers may be assumed to carry residues of such images.

                               

 

Genesis in Several Pages

•   •   •

God creates a world.  Two (possibly contradictory) accounts are offered with each apparently culminating in the creation of an original couple, Adam and Eve; they are housed in a lush garden. They fail to abide by God’s one proscription, a dietary one, lose their original innocence, and are punished. They initially have two children, with the one killing the other in a rage of envy. Other children are born and, presumably, through unavoidably incestuous mating, a race proliferates.

 

Mankind becomes corrupt and God decides to destroy-by-flood all but a boatful of animals, together with one righteous man, Noah, and his family. God’s wrath is quieted and humanity is given a fresh start.  Some generations later, the descendants gather and attempt to erect a prideful skyscraper; God scrambles their languages, thus putting a temporary end to their hubris. This leads to a renewed distribution of men over the face of the Earth. So much for the first eleven chapters.

 

The scenes depicting the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs are cast in the oases of the inhospitable badlands that are the Judaean desert and span some three hundred Biblical years. A variety of family themes appear in stories of the first Patriarch, Abraham. These themes, particularly envy, fear, and barrenness, will be repeated in the life of his son, Isaac, and, thereafter, in the life of his grandson, Jacob; these themes will resonate in overt acting out among Abraham’s great-grandchildren. Abraham is afraid of neighboring Chieftains and cannot live with his nephew, Lot, who is often in considerable trouble. Lot becomes entangled in sinning Sodom and is saved by his uncle who argues passionately with God, in a failed attempt, to save the city. During the period following the devastation, Lot is incested unwittingly by his daughters. Thereafter, Abraham claims that the erstwhile barren Sarah is his sister and, pointedly not his wife, in order to protect himself from several desert potentates. He has a child, Ishmael, with his concubine, Chagar, and, somewhat later, Isaac is born to Sarah. Sarah orders Abraham to expel Chagar and Ishmael after she sees Ishmael playing with Isaac; God concurs with Sarah and Abraham cooperates in the deed with some reluctance. In the next chapter, God tells Abraham to kill Isaac; Abraham scrupulously follows God’s directives, this time with speed, if not alacrity, and perseveres until divine intervention stills his hand.

 

Isaac appears to have never recovered from this ordeal; he is given but several lines of script with a total of seven words until his marriage, from which time on he remains under the control of his barren wife, Rebekah. Apparently in identification with his father, Isaac lies to a local chieftain fearfully claiming that his wife is his sister. Rebekah gives birth to twin sons, Jacob and Esau; they fight and are lost in envy from the womb and through their youth. Jacob purloins Esau’s birthright and, later, Rebekah hoodwinks Isaac into arranging for her favorite son, Jacob, to receive his befuddled father’s blessings. Jacob runs away fearing for his life.

 

Jacob passes much of his life in paranoid-like concerns that Esau will retaliate while Esau appears, after the initial shock passes, curiously nonplused by the matter. Jacob has two wives; each chooses a concubine in a competition for favor (from their husband); this envy is quite openly portrayed as directly related to fecundity. The favored wife, Rachel, is initially barren, like her mother-in-law and hers before her. Thirteen children are born: Leah gives birth to the first four children; Rachel’s handmaiden, Bilha, to the fifth and sixth; Zilpa, Leah’s handmaiden, produces numbers seven and eight; Leah the ninth through the eleventh child; and Rachel, at long-last, mothers the two youngest sons, including Joseph, the favorite and twelfth child.

 

Things are not well in this family whose troubles would cross the eyes of the most seasoned of family practitioners working in one of today’s violent inner cities. We see, for instance, the following:

 

•      Jacob and Leah’s daughter, Dinah, falls in love with a local. His male clansmen are convinced by Dinah’s brothers to circumcise themselves so that a marriage might receive their blessings. They do so; nonetheless, her full-brothers, Shimeon and Levi, slaughter the entire village while the men are recovering from their surgeries.

•      Another of Leah’s sons, Reuven, in the meantime, incests one of his father’s concubines.

•      Rachel’s firstborn, Joseph, is busy gossiping and telling his dreams; he ends up in Egypt after the brothers nearly kill the brother they dub: This Master of Dreams.

•      Judah, another of Leah’s children, has three sons. The eldest, Er, is killed by God for an unspecified reason related by the text to divine disfavor. The second, Onan, receives the same punishment after utilizing coitus interruptus in order not to impregnate his brother’s widow as was expected of him according to the Law of the Levirate. Judah ends up unwittingly having twins with his now twice-widowed ex-daughter-in-law.

 

Meanwhile back in Egypt, Joseph rises to power after extricating himself from a seduction-gone-sour; his boss’s wife had falsely accused him of instigating an erotic chase. Joseph’s political elevation, just as his previous fall, occurs due to his facility with dreams. A famine breaks out in Canaan leading Jacob to send his sons down to Egypt to purchase grain. Joseph, now second to Pharaoh, conceals his identity, toys with his brothers, torments them, and eventually puts his old father at some risk to depression for several months at the thought of losing yet another son. A rapprochement occurs followed by a family move to Egypt. Jacob and his tribe, despite their foreign ways and practices,  are treated like royalty by the Pharaoh.

      

Jacob effusively blesses Joseph, his successful son, gathers all his clan together, sparingly blesses the lot and, once again, bestows wondrous prophecies on Joseph, his favorite. Jacob finishes his blessings and curses ... and dies. The sons escort Jacob’s body back to Canaan, as he requested. Genesis closes with Joseph asking that the same be done with him and assuring his brothers that he harbors no ill-will towards them. So ends this brief history of the world from creation to the soon-to-come bondage in Egypt that began after Joseph’s death, perchance some 3600 years ago.

•   •   •

Here are my questions for me for this year’s reading in torah:

 

Q1: What does a fair reading of the text say about when our God is ired? What gets the divined muster mussed?

 

Q2: What is the good life, as portrayed by Genesis or

 

Q3: Is there a possible notion of a good life?

 

Q4:

If there is such a Good Life, does it come along with any good relationships … marital, filial, or peer. Hard to find even one in the Book of Genesis.

 

Twinnies Visiting

M and two of our grandkids ... genetically identical girls are sleeping upstairs. GuntherDog and I came down to start another day. Got me thinking about kids .... and what I've referred to here as the "fractal" nature of the unfolding generations.

As it is not written: Kids? You can live with them and you can live without them. By the time M and I settled in Philadelphia in 1974, we must've lived in 9 places in same number of years, including three continents. We managed the production of two spawn and a third was to come 2 years later. I suspect my kids have roughly matched their parents sojourns with one of them always living within 750 miles and now sharing an office sometimes with me ... another flitting around with 2500 miles and now 330 miles away and another who has lived in Europe, Asia, South America and has been with 11 miles for past couple of years.

You now, I suppose, the various ideas about Brownian motions .... kinda like dropping a drunk in the middle of a field, some have said.  The probabilities are that they'll end up in proximity to the dropoff point but the probability is by no means zero that they'll wander off to great distances.

Long liked Gibran's dittie on kids, except that my sense is that the stability of parents of which he speaks is a relative measure and only that .... I could, I suspect, someday climb on one of my 1974 Raleighs, kickstart a Norton or turn the keys on my Boxster and be off following the Sun or my typewriter into a new adventure .... though it would be cruel for M and I to leave it to my kids to clean out closets that have been filling for 35 years in our old barn that we've called home and I'm not sure how happy M would be on the back of a Norton.

I suspect that Gibran was talking about different differences with kids ... and those become pronounced much more so than the geographic ones. Like with the twin girls upstairs, genetics is but part of an unfolding matrix of potentials that allow us to carry ourselves (free will, choice and all tha philosophical stuff) in a multiplicity of directions by the time we end up still figuring things out in the Fourth Quarter. If I had to write it for Gibran, it would start something like:

 'Your Selves are not Unitary Selves ....
but the unpredictable ends of Complexity
and of Chaos,
Mother to all the gods.
Fasten your seatbelts;
Enjoy the ride.'

On Children (Gibran ... last century sometime)
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Hillary 2016

I have several times cited Stanley Kunitz's piece called The Layers in which he admonishes folk to "Live in the layers and not the litter' of life. He ends it this way:

"Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
Is already written.
I am not done with my changes."

As I listen to the the newscasts and their talk of fires, murders, theatrics in the world of American politics, and terroristic shootings, I find myself annoyed and amused at the manner in which the pundits wink at each other about peoiple's plans for the future. We all know that McCain is too old to run for the American Presidency, and chances are Biden is, too. But when Hillary Clinton says she hasn't got her plans straight for running in 2016 and running the free world from 2017-2021, everybody "winks" .... as if to say ... "We know she's gonna run."

Lets see. Sen. First Lady Clinton will be 66, this year and 69 at the next election. She'd be 68+ and working almost 24-7 during the primary and the general election. If she made two terms, she be 77 when she could start collecting retirement benefits and packing up the White House. Mind you, it's not that I think that's impossible .... but ... "Oh, My aching back."

Brings to mind the whole process of planning 5-10 years ahead in the Last Qurter. I suppose we do it and I suppose there is no other way. But do we live with the presumption that this will go on?

I guess we have no choice.

And still ....

Any case, when Mrs. Clinton says she doesn't know whether she's running, I tend to believe her. Hell! I was running 4-6 miles a day just a coulpe of years back and now running sets me into an arrhythmia ... in a snap.

You go, Girl!

 

 

 

When I think of my visitor

Witnesses (HHC July 1994)

On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood
A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.
Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could
When he bought them.
Was it nineteen sixty four?

One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,
“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,
The leather’s still good, the color still brown,
And inside
The author hadn’t changed his name.

Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man
Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.
These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,
That from vibrant forms,
Takes man and transforms him to Lore.

They Say It Ain't Easy

Well, it isn't uncomplicated to say good-bye to a friend. (I know, I know. It's a kind of double negative ... but you can ignore that, this once.)

J had been visiting me every week for about ten years and had only recently significantly cut back on his practice of medicine ... J turned 83, this Summer. I don't know that the ten years that we met flew by in a flash like screaming through an abandoned train-stop without even slowing down ... no ... that was more something that came on slowly. J was a private kind of person and warmed up slowly to our meetings. He collected pictures and statues of wolves and, maybe, saw himself less as a member of the pack than as the proverbial lone wolf. Oh, he had children and wives and was much beloved by those people who came to visit us both. Mine didn't know that he came to visit me and since he was a bit older than I am, if they had suspicions, they might have thought that I visited him. I remember one who looked puzzled when I explained that I didn't know how to travel to his office from mine. "He knows exactly where your office is!"

J did, in fact, cease coming to see me about a month ago ... after falling. We Last Quarter types (he was technically what I call an Overtimer ... Over 80, that is) often have something minor ... a fall in J's case ... Harold had what they thought was the flu until someone checked his pancreatic enzymes and found the worst just 4 or 5 days before he died .... Corbett had suffered nonspecific pain before they found nasties in his bones. In J's journey, they found problems in his GI tract .... doesn't matter what they were. I began visiting him in the hospital.

Funny how you know someone in one way and then the relationship changes. I got to meet one of his kids ... actually, I had met one years ago ... I talked more to his partner of many years .... We had talked for all these years mostly about his journey, an internal one .... talked somewhat about mine, too.

Montaigne, the essayist, had begun writing his essays, as I recall, after his friend Etienne de la Boitie had died. They had spoken often about the variety of matters that occasion life and, now, Etienne was no more. I don't know Montaigne's life story any longer (I think I once did) but it seems to me that his and maybe all of our creative bursts arrive after losses ... arise out of the mourning process. The newest issue of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used to categorize human frailties lists mourning as a sickness, if it goes on too long.

Oh! Our silly language. I think of the advertisements that say, for instance:

1) Use this medicine which might kill you but talk to your doc, first ...

or

2) This donation is tax deductible to the full extent allowed by the law.

As the kids say: No shit!

I don't know when sadness about loss is "too much" .... but I'm still, indeed, quite sad even for this man whose time had come and with whom I'd never broken bread.

I bought a copy of that Diagnostic Manual just this week ... the paperback version that was about the size of a harlequin romance. I remember leaving the store and wondering whether I must be very rich, indeed, to pay $74 for a paperback or whether I was just $74 poorer. I won't read what it has to say about mourning; I really don't care and will continue to be saddened over no longer meeting with the crusty but kind old fellow who brought much to many, including me.

The Good Life

Couldn't quite sleep, last night. The great god Sopor, the demi-god of sleep, doesn't visit every night of the Fourth Quarter. Had spent a couple of hours in the dental chair having my lip torn from my chin ... maybe that was it. It could've been the work outside I had done the previous day ... I had felt good doing it and, indeed, had felt good 'about' doing it. Still, the Soul willing or not maybe needs to find housing in a younger wrapping.

I was visited at night by a dream in which two men were threatening to throw a jagged, cantaloupe-sized rock through my car window. I saw them and invited them into my office ... they were dressed like G-Men. Maybe all the talk about the NSA spying on citizens got me. I thought it odd that I would invite those who wish me harm into my office. Still, for almost all my adult life, I have invited people into my office, even though they often harbored expressed-inclinations to do me harm. But back to the dream. I thought of stunning them and magically had a stun-gun nearby.

Instead, I found myself reminded of an ancient morning meditation on the Good Life that I decided to share with them. It goes something like this:

"These are the activities that one benefits from in the here and now even though the principal reward must remain for some other venue: Respect for Parents (I'd add respect for children and grandchildren, as well); Random Acts of Kindness; Morning and Evening Visits to Sacred Spaces; Hospitality; Visiting of the Sick; Provisioning the Newly-Wed; Accompanying the Dead; Deep Involvement in Meditation; Fostering Peace among Friends and among the Married, as well; but Study of the World is Equal to the Lot!"

I don't know, any longer if or how my visitors reacted. Were they impressed by my acumen or did they throw their rock on my smart little crown and do me in. But as I walked downstairs with GuntherDog, I found myself wondering about the various descriptions of the Good Life. From the Biblical description of Holiness in Leviticus 19 to the Greek notion of Sophrosune (sorry! Greek transliteration is such a pain in the ass for me after all these years) to the everyday little kindnesses that we show each other. Maybe the Last Quarter is made for reflecting on such matters.

I don't really believe that those lost "overtime" Souls in the Nursing Homes are wondering about "The Meaning of Life" ... but that would be nice.  

And the Beat, indeed, Goes On!

Sierpinski's Triangle is made by pulling out the middle quarter of an equillateral triangle and, then, replicating that process with the triangles that remain. This rendering of it lifted off the net is a variant that doesn't quite work but that's a mathematical matter ... not to worry. The point of this fractal, as it is called, and others is that no matter how many "generations" you go into the process, the entire process is represented.

I knew Warclaw Sierepinski and his sidekick in developing Topology, Kazimierz Kuratowski, in the late 1960's/early 1970's. They had worked mostly from the 1920's to make Poland and its Academies of Science centers for the study of a specific type of Mathematics. S & K were young, then and full of their "unfolding processes." The French said that such national specialization would fail ... the French were wrong and those young men and a third, Janiciewski, who died in one of the Wars that took many young men's lives between the Great Wars played out their parts.

I thought of these Fractals last night ... as a denizen of the Fourth Quarter, I watched one of my younger grandchildren having already developed her own specific charachter. One of the younger ones, still not quite 10, was doing some performance art ... pretending in an improvised skit that the few drops of wine she had imbibed had changed her character. K intends to be an actress. Her older sister will be a writer. Even us Last Quarter types can recall when we were taking form ... at least our taking on the first of a number of forms that constituted the first Quarters of our performance arts.

And the beat goes on.

Days for Reflection

I opened up my e-mail this morning and there was a request from a Dog Rescue Service for an old and grey fella ... looks mostly Beagle. Listed as a Senior. He's lying in wraparound position that so many dogs assume ... Is it the foetal position for dogs? Head on Tail. Sad eyes. What can he be remembering? I wonder.

Today is a Day for Remembering. So much, indeed, to remember. Met a number of older men ... my generation ... in the past few weeks ... bathed in memories of the past or bounded by them. So much depends on the position from which one views .... I guess that's perspective ... or something like that.

Similar to the preponderance of Fourth Quarter denizens, I am an orphan. I remember my religious parents praying to their God .... meditating ... eating ... meditating, still some more. My memory, need I add, is not of them but of my meditations and reflections on them. I don't rightly know if my parents were devout in their beliefs or skeptics. I remember them shopping and cooking much of the days before their Holy Days. M and I shopped and, this year, she cooked a great deal. By the time of a family gathering around the tablee, M was tired. I had been with visitors almost the entire day and had barely time to make a fruity green juice for the co-celebrants.

A lot of spinach and some red kale
2 oranges
2 lemons
2 apples
Celery ... maybe 4 or 5 stalks
A fat cucumber
A green pepper
A Big chunk of Ginger

I served it, last night, in a pitcher with a big stalk of celery to keep it mixed.

Only 2/3rds of my spawn and theirs were in attendance. By the time one reaches the Last Quarter, the magical slight of hand that has one believing that one has produced a new generation free of strife has been tempered by the light of too many days to count. Let's see. The Fourth Quarter begins after 31,000 sunrises and sunsets have been witnessed. The Sun Also Rises ... The Sun Also Sets.

The meal was joyously followed by a vigorous game of after dinner basketball in which napkins are smooshed up to find airborne pathways ... trajectories ... in an attempt to "sink one" in a water glass across or on the furthest side of the table. That doesn't sound "reflective" but I have a feeling that it is.

"Worship God with Glee and Awe."

My Mom and Dad had a sense of humor ... at least between them. So, do M and I. It's very good to meditate while hearing both the pratter and laughter of grandchildren. A teenager ... two tweens ... and the Big Time Cute 4 year old baby-of-the-cousins.

Mah Tovu! How good are your tents and dwelling places, O Jacob!

In my faith tradition, the word for prayer is in the reflexive voice and means roughly "to wonder at oneself."

How blessed are the tents and the dwelling place of  M & H .... Praised Be!

Gibran wrote of Tears and Laughter ... apparently in that order.

 

Still "In the Fray"

Still trying to eat the last three peas on my plate with semi-perfect equanimity. Mostly, things move slowly towards change and (1) my 85'ish visitor is back in the ICU, (2) M's back is still a mess from the fall two months ago, (3) Friend R's broken shoulder socket still makes it impossible for her to settle the shock of white hair on her head (though her husband, due to her infirmity, has no managed to cut his 4th onion in 50 years of marriage ... Go, Miltie!), (4) I'm worried about the young friend who was just released from a psych ward after feeling she and her husband  had enough, (5) still living with my own state of incompletion and (6) aware that my children were not God's answer to my inadequacies ... perfecting the mold, so to speak. Oh! And the thumb that lets me balance this laptop has announced its arthritic state ... the Cosmos' way of telling me that I could have more empathy for the likes of GuntherDog and colleagues who argue theory. I think it was Goether who opined: Grey, my friend, is all theory; but Green, the evergrowing Tree of Life.

It does look, this morning, that the USA will be bombing Assad in the upcoming weeks and something less than 1% of the World's population will be celebrating a New Year on their lunar calendar which figures the World to be 5773 years old, tomorrow. A much smaller mystical subpopulation of Jews finds interest in theoretical questions about how an omnipresent being such as their God who "fills the Earth and all that is contained within it" could find space for the creation, say the Sixth Day creation of humankind?

"Where could he put them," these heaven-centered folk ask. Where was the the space for them to occupy. Their solution? God, the omnipotent, had to redact herself or himself ... had to undergo Tzimtzum, they called it, in order to give room for other Selves at the Table of Life.

May it be thy will, Oh! God ... Great Spirit of the Universe ... Animator of the World ((Anima Mundi) ... that willed being that goes under the name "I shall be as I shall be" ... may it be your will and my effort that I find it in myself to make room for others ... for the Great M who I've accompanied and who has accompanied me for just shy of 50 years .... for our aging children and their companions and children and livestock ... all those who grew out of an innocent flirtation in the early 60's and now claim to be kin of mine .... May it be your will that my near and dear and the others with whom I share this space someday learn to make room for each other ... so that the task of Elijah set forth by Malachi will be realized:

"And he shall return the hearts of the parents unto their children ... and the children onto their parents ... lest I need to return and fuck up the Earth completely."

Peace in the family ... Peace beyond. The Biologist Folk Singer, Sam Hinton, was prone (Newport Folk Festival 1965 maybe?) to say that the choice could be no clearer: "Peace to the World or the World in Pieces."